Alternate rhyme

Alternate rhyme is a way of joining lines by the scheme abab, when lines rhyme through one: the first with the third, the second with the fourth. This is the most widespread type of rhyme scheme in literary lyric, since it creates a balanced, flexible quatrain structure and allows the alternation of different types of clausulae (for example, feminine and masculine rhymes). Alternate rhyme unites clarity with a certain rhythmic tension: the completion of the thought in the second line is "postponed" to the fourth, which holds the reader's attention. A vast number of Ukrainian classical and contemporary poems are written in alternate rhyme. Together with adjacent and envelope rhyme, it forms the canonical repertoire of stanzaic organisation.